3-D Crosswell Electromagnetic Inversion Based on General Measures

Abstract

The crosshole electromagnetic (EM) method is used in reservoir development monitoring and evaluation. It reflects the resistivity distribution between wells in the form of EM response changes and describes the spatial distribution of pore fluids in subsurface reservoirs based on the correlation between resistivity and pore fluids. This technique has been used to describe reservoirs, monitor steam and brine flooding to improve oil recovery, optimize the design of infilled wells, and verify the effectiveness of reservoir numerical simulations. However, due to the complexity of the electrical distribution of underground reservoirs and the limitations of the crosswell EM response range, there is still a lack of practical and effective crosswell EM imaging methods. This article presents a three-dimensional EM inversion scheme for interpreting crosswell data in the frequency domain with general measures. For the forward modeling, the equation for the secondary electric field was discretized using the staggered-grid finite difference scheme and was solved using the Krylov subspace iterative method. For the inversion problem, the general measure of the data misfit and regularization constraints were integrated using the Gauss–Newton minimization method to form an objective function. By selecting appropriate parameters and regularization constraints, the sharp boundaries and blocky features of the inverted target were recovered. The sensitivity was calculated using the reciprocity relationship, and the method was found to be beneficial to determining appropriate initial values of regularization coefficients. Two synthetic data sets and a field data inversion of a crosswell configuration demonstrate the feasibility of this scheme.